#0039 Miner 2049er

You know what I've noticed in doing these reviews? The most boring games to write about are the games that are not quite bad, just not very good. Which brings us to today’s game on 1K1VGYMPBYD. Today we look at Miner 2049er, a platformer developed for nearly every platform at the time by Big Five Studios in 1982.

Okay, so the story goes that a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police named Bounty Bob is on a mission to search through Nuclear Ned's abandoned uranium mines for the evil Yukon Yohan. Bob must claim each section of each mine by running over it, while avoiding strange radioactive creatures that have been left behind.

Okay, so in this game you have to inspect every section of each mine in search of Yukon Yohan while avoiding various radioactive creatures that inhabit the mine. As you walk over a section of flooring, it fills with color, marking it. To complete a level every section of flooring must be colored. There are ten mines total. Each level is timed as there's only a limited amount of oxygen or something I don't know. It's not clear.

And that's... About it. Really not much else to tell. Is it good? I suppose. It's okay for an early platformer. It's no Donkey Kong, but it's certainly playable, the jump physics are still stiff, as they are in other platformers of it's time, the timer is unforgiving, the mechanic of collecting mining memorabilia to kill the enemies is confusing, as is the whole “step on every surface” thing that's at the center. But overall it's fine. I can't recommend it or anything, but it's fairly harmless.

Here's the catch however, it was a HUGE success and a very popular game at the time. As A.N.A.L.O.G. Magazine put it, “[Miner 2049er is] one of those rare games which looks like as if it were designed, and not just thrown together”. Praising it's animation and large number of levels. In 1984, Softline Magazine's readers named the game the fourth most-popular Apple game.

What the heck? What about this game makes it so special? The graphics and by extension, animations are nothing to write home about, I saw far better animation last year. To me it does look like this game was thrown together in a matter of months by greedy game devs to capitalize on the success of games like Donkey Kong. And yet, there are all these critics who are praising it. Why is that?

Well I started to search a little deeper within me and I realized something. Compare this game to what has come before it. When you really think about it, nothing like this game has ever really been done before. Sure Donkey Kong was a platformer, but where that games was transcending platforms to rescue your girlfriend from an abused ape, this game you must walk over every section of the floor. Sure, they both have scaffolding to climb, and the first level is slightly reminiscent of the first level of Donkey Kong, but that's where the similarities end. Honestly, this is a very original game. And when you really stop and think about it, it really does deserve the praise that it did. It is unique, the controls are simple, the levels are varied and plentiful, heck there's 10 levels! That's like 2.5 times the amount in Donkey Kong. All unique, never stale.

So, now that I realize what a true gem this game was, there only remains one question. Why didn't I see this before? I mean, it's not like I'm jaded by new games, I have more respect for pre NES classics than most gamers I know. So why did this game, a unique and well designed jem fail to enthrall me at first?

I think the answer to that question lies in the platformer genre in general. Nearly all of the games that I've played on this list so far have been SHMUPS, which are a niche genre now, catering to bullet hell fans, RPGs, which I was never a huge fan of, maze games, which are all but extinct now, text adventures which is even more niche than SHMUPS these days, only being played by the most hardcore of fans. Really, nearly all game genres on this list are from genres I don't play, or have since gone extinct with the exception of one, Platformers. Platformers are probably one of the most common genres I still play today. Just this afternoon I picked up a controller and played a good thirty minutes of Super Meat Boy. And that's where the problem is. While other genres are easy to take by themselves because they're genres I don't play, platformers are things I do play. All the time. So if an early platformer doesn't have the advantage of being a nostalgic Nintendo title, I'm going to be more harsh on it and subconsciously judge it on the unfair standards of today. It's something that I'm going to have to learn to be more aware of as I continue to review games. This game was a real eye opener, and I hope many more do the same. After all, that's the very reason I took this challenge.

Next up: Moon Patrol

#0038 Dig Dug

Man I am on a roll here. Three games in one week? A new record. Well, today we're looking at Dig Dug. An extremely popular... Maze game? (Honestly, that's the closest I could come, the game defies genre) Developed by Namco in 1982.

In Dig Dug, you play as the most adorable little guy ever, who's actual name is actually somewhat of a controversy. See, officially, Namco has given him the name Dig Dug, but in other Namco games such as the Mr. Driller series, we find out that Taizo Hori, the father of Susumu Hori, the main character of Mr. Driller, was the main character in Dig Dug. Taizo/Dig Dug was also the ex-husband of Toby Masuyo, the main heroine of Baraduke, another game by Namco.

So Taizo Dug's job in Dig Dug is to dig in the dirt of what appears to be a garden, and kill the monsters that dwell there by inflating them with an air pump until they explode. A rather gruesome death if you ask me. Or by dropping a rock on their heads. There are two different kinds of creatures, Pookas, who are little tomato looking things with goggles, and Fygars, who are little green dragons that can breathe fire. When the last creature is left on the playing field it will try to escape off the screen, unless you can kill it before it escapes. You advance to the next level by clearing the screen of enemies.

The controls are beyond simple. Standard joystick moves you around, and a single button deploys the hose. Digging through the dirt so effortlessly is a very creative gameplay choice and is very addicting as it allows you to build your own maze and set up traps unlike other maze games like Pac-Man where your maze is predetermined. Being able to move practically anywhere on the screen is a lot of fun, and is honestly one of the best parts of the game.

The graphics in this game are nothing if not adorable. I love all the bright colors, the quirky music that only plays while you're moving for some reason, the animation on the characters, all of it contributes to this happy, carefree atmosphere. It's very obvious that Namco is trying to catch lightning in a bottle again after the popularity of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man by appealing to the female/younger child demographic with it's cute imagery and lack of gun violence. And while it wasn't QUITE the hit that Pac-Man was, it was still a popular game for people of all ages and genders.

If I HAD to nitpick the game I might say that I could have used more variety in enemies. The two they have are fun and memorable characters, but there's only so much you can do with them before you just want something else, another twist thrown at you to mix things up a tad. But like I said, that's just a nitpick.

Overall, this game rocks. (Lol, get it? Rocks?) It's adorable, the playstyle is unique and refreshing, the character are memorable. Just overall a solid title that deserves it's reputation as one of the greatest games from the Golden Age. If you haven't played it, give it a shot, and see for yourself why everyone loves our charming little Dig Hori.

#0037 Robotron 2084

Finally, a really good game. Not to say that that The Hobbit and Choplifter! Weren't good, but they never really kept my attention like, say, Donkey Kong. But hooooo boy is this an awesome game. Okay, today we're looking at Robrtron: 2084, a SHMUP developed by Vid Kidz and released by Williams Electronics, the same people behind Stargate and Joust.

Set in 2084, in a post-apocalyptic future where robots have turned against humans in a cybernetic revolt ala Terminator 2. You play as some as a genetically modified superhuman aimed with the task of saving the last human family from death at the hands of rogue appliances.

Drawing inspiration from games like Berzerk and even novels like 1984, co designers Eugene Jarvis, and Larry DeMar came up with a two-joystick control scheme to provide more precise controls, the left joystick controls your character while the right control stick aims your gun in any of the eight directions. One of the first arcade games to do so. In this game, you must face wave after wave of rogue robots bent on killing you, while trying to rescue civilians in the process. Each of the game's enemies are surprisingly unique in that no two serve the same function. There's grunts that are the standard enemies that chase you, Hulks can't be killed but only go after human civilians, Enforcers are annoying, as they actually shoot back at you, and even multiply, and Brains brainwash the humans on the stage. Each wave contains more enemies and obstacles than the last, making the game one of the most difficult and frantic I've ever played.

OMG Robotron, where have you been all my life? Guys, this is unlike any other game that came before it. I know I say that a lot in the Golden Age of Arcade games, but wow, this is what it means to be an action game. Unlike other SHMUPs, this game has enemies coming at you from all directions, resulting in a frenzied panic that's unlike anything we've ever seen in a game before this. The advancement of technology is really showing because there is just so much going on in this game. The fact that dozens of enemies can be on screen at the same time was practically unheard of just a couple years ago. 

There is just so much about this game that I love. I love the panic it ensues by constantly forcing you into corners, I love the action that comes from having to constantly be on your toes, I love the conflict that you must choose between saving the humans and gaining more points, or saving yourself. The size of the screen really has a lot going for it as well as nearly the entire thing is taken up by game. The actual HUD is surprisingly small, only a tiny bit is dedicated to lives and points. 

The fact that I've never heard of this game baffles me. As it was a huge sucess when it came out, but when the grwat arcade classics are brought up, people always mention Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Space Invaders, but nobody seems to mention Robotron, which is a shame because it's honestly become one of my favorite classic arcade games of all time.

Guys, I don't know how I never heard of this game before, but seriously, you have to play it. It seems that so many games even as far forward as Resident Evil 4 owe themselves to this style of swarming you with enemies from all directions. It kept me entertained for nearly an hour in one sitting, and let's just say that I’m glad MAME doesn't take quarters to run, otherwise I'd be out 50 bucks by now. Seriously, if you haven't yet, go check this out. You will not be disappointed.

Next up: Dig Dug

#0036 Choplifter!

So guys, finals are over and school is out for winter! You know what that means! That means I'm back with “1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die”.

For those who are new or don't remember, I'm going through the book “1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die” and playing each game in chronological order to build kind of a video game history with all the great games from those eras.

So, today on 1K1VGYMPBYD we're looking at Choplifter! An Apple II game developed by Dan Gorlin and published by Br0derbund in 1982. It was ported to several systems and in 1985 Sega rereleased a coin-op arcade remake,which in turn had several ports of it's own, making it one of the few games to start as a home computer game, and then be ported to arcade, and in 1983 Billboard Magazine named it Computer Game of the Year. That's a lot of praise for a humble computer game, but does it hold up? Eh, kinda.

Before I talk about the game itself, let me first mention how hard it was to find a way to play this game. Normally I play all my old computer games on an Apple II emulator, but for some reason the site I play said games on wasn't working, so I tried to find alternative means of playing the game including a Java version. Nothing worked. I ended up playing the 1985 remake by Sega, so yeah, going by that the graphics and sound were phenomenal compared to the 1982 version, and still the same overall concept.

In this game, you play as a rescue helicopter, your mission being to rescue civilian prisoners of war from an enemy base. You must rescue as many civilians as possible and return them to your home base without getting shot by enemy tanks, turrets or fighter jets yourself.

In 1982, Softline Magazine called Choplifter "what may well be the first Interactive Computer-Assisted Animated Movie. A fusion of arcade gaming, simulation, and filmic visual aesthetics, Choplifter is destined to occupy a place in the software Hall of Fame"

Wow, the first Interactive Computer Assisted Animated Movie? Filmic visual aesthetics? This game sounds amazing! With praise like that you'd expect it to have some amazing, maybe even 8bit graphics right? Well no, not really. The graphics really aren't all that much to write home about. I mean, they're okay, compared to other computer games at the time, considering many don't even have graphics at all. Overall though, they're not super impressive, I thought Ultima had better graphics honestly.

Well, maybe it has an amazing story that can move it's players with all the emotion it evokes, or keep them at the edge of their seats with the nonstop narrative tension? Again, no. The story is there, but the story can be summed up by “you're a helicopter that rescues hostages from a POW camp”. It gets a little better when you think about how much the hostages need you and how much they're relying on you getting them home to their families, but other than that, the game's narrative really isn't any deeper than Space Invaders. Even Missile Command, which had a similar simple story, had HUGE implications that told a moving, disturbing story about the futile nature of a nuclear holocaust. Choplifter, on the other hand, does not have those deep implications. What you see is what you get.

Okay, so let's take the hype out of this. Let's just look at the game at face value. The controls are a little tricky to get the hang of at first, there's a button that turns the helicopter, which is a little tedious, but it allows you to move backwards while firing, so I think that was actually a good idea. The concept is interesting and different from any of the other games I've played thus far, and that's always a plus. The difficulty is just right, after I finally got the controls down, I had little trouble getting the hostages to safety, and the difficulty with each subsequent hostage group got steadily more difficult, in just the right increments to keep me coming back.

Overall, not a bad game. Certainly not worth the hype it received, and probably not going to be game of the year for me, but a good game nonetheless. If you're interested in a helicopter simulator, and like escort games, then you might get a kick out of this. There's an HD remake for PSN, XBLA, and steam, but it doesn't look nearly as good as the original. I'd recommend hunting down the 1985 remake. You won't be disappointed.

Next up: Robotron 2084

#0035 The Hobbit

I have a feeling I might upset some people with this review... Well, here we go anyway. Today I played The Hobbit, a 1982 illustrated text adventure developed by Beam Software for most home computers of the time. It was based on the 1937 book of the same name by J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

If you know the story of the Hobbit, then you know the story of the game. A Hobbit, a wizard and a dwarf set out on a journey to kill a dragon named Smaug, get gold and all that jazz. Honestly, I'm not super familiar with the book, and since the game actually comes with the book, I guess they never thought to explain said story ingame. You're just thrown into the game and told “here you go! Have fun.” so most of the details of the story still remain a mystery to me.

What this game is truly famous for though is it's innovations to the test adventure genre. For one, the parser was extremely innovative and advanced, especially for it's time. It used a subset of English called Inglish. See, most text adventures at the time relied solely on simple verb-noun parsers allowing for phrases like “get ye flask”, Inglish, on the other hand allows you to type advanced sentences like “ask Gandalf about the curious map then take sword and kill troll with it”. The parser was complex allowing for pronouns, adverbs, punctuation and prepositions allowing you to interact with the game in ways that simply were not possible in games such as Zork.

The game was also one of the first to feature illustrated graphics to accompany the text. A simple innovation, but it makes a pretty big difference when you're trying to decipher where you are, and where you've been. Something that could get confusing in previous text adventure games.

But that's not all, the game apparently actually has a physics system. All objects, including characters had a calculated size, and weight. Using Inglish, you could place objects inside of other objects, you can place characters inside of objects and then throw the object through a wall. Fun stuff.

Unlike other text adventures at the time, the game was played in real time. If you walk away from the key board, events continued without you by automatically entering the wait command. It got me killed once. Wasn't fun, but there's a pause command, so it's okay.

This game also has a cast of NPCs that are completely independent of the player. They all go about their lives all off screen, they have loyalties, strengths and personalities. Gandalf, for example, roamed freely around the game world, picking up objects, getting into fights and getting captured. This actually leads to some problems though. See, while it's cool that all the characters interact independently, this means that they could also get themselves into trouble without you even knowing it. Apparently it's very easy for crucial characters to die off screen and render the entire game unbeatable. Most of the bugs that cause this were fixed, but for the time, this 584 byte game was massive apparently, and was very hard to patch entirely (patches being entirely new games).

This game was hailed as one of the greatest text adventures of all time, challenged only by Zork for it's use of images, the flexibility of Inglish and the independence of the NPCs. So with a game so innovative, how does it stand up today?

Okay, I have to admit something here. I do not care for The Lord of the Rings. At all. I've only seen the movies and from what I've seen, it's three movies of walking, walking and more walking. Yeah, I know the books are huge and J.R.R. Tolkien basically transformed the fantasy genre into what it is today and that nearly every work of fantasy from the last forty or so years has taken a page from Tolkien's book. He is one of the most influential authors in modern history. But I'm sorry, LotR just doesn't do it for me. That includes the Hobbit. Which this game is based off, and I found it very boring. Extremely hard to get into and the whole time I was very aware that I was playing a game.

The story of The Hobbit is not explained at all, you're thrown into the setting and just expected to know what to do. The screen above is the actual first screen of the game.  If this were a simple adventure game like Zork, this would be fine, but the Hobbit is an epic fantasy with a very intricate and important story, so to not be informed of said story is a HUGE flaw in my book as people like me, who have never read the book are not going to know what is going on at all. I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, or where I was going. Also, if Thorin complains one more time I'm going to cut his little dwarf kneecaps off with my sword.

Overall, I didn't like it. It was confusing, and I felt like that one guy who doesn't get the inside joke. Just confused and left out. The mechanics of game are amazing, Inglish is a huge step forward for text adventures, and the inclusion of things like physics and realtime are mechanics that are long overdue, I just wish they weren't implemented into a game like The Hobbit where I can't fully appreciate. If you're a fan of The Lord of the Rings, then you might just get a kick out of this, but if you barely know anything about the books like me, you're probably best steering clear.

Next up: Choplifter

#0035 Polybius

Alright! We're diving right into the realm of the creepy! Supposedly Created by Sinneslöschen

as a government funded experiment in mind control in 1981, this game has been elevated to legendary status as the biggest Video Game Urban Legend of all time. So move over Ben, because we're talking about the bizarre Tempest clone Polybius!

Seems innocent enough.

Okay, for those who might not know, Polybius is an urban legend about a rare arcade game released in 1981 by the obscure company Sinneslöschen (German for “sense Delete” according to Google translate, very subtle). This game was supposedly very popular, with with people lining up down the street just to play it, it became so popular that people were literally at each other's throats for a shot at the game as fist fights broke out over who could play next. However, players who did engage in the strange puzzle game reported strange things, such as hearing a woman crying, or seeing grotesque faces out of the corner of their eyes. Players would also have nightmares, experience nausea, headaches, blackouts, or even develop amnesia. A few were even driven to suicide. Others stopped playing games altogether and at least one became an anti-video game activist (Of course no source ever says who that was). According to the arcade owners at the time, strange men wearing black suits would often come to collect “records” from the game.

They never took any money, but simply data on gameplay. It's because of these men in black that many belive that Polybius an experiment using subliminal messages and psychedelia conducted by a vague yet menacing government agency. The game remains a mystery to this day as around one month after it's release, all of the cabinets suddenly disappeared overnight. Not even the owners knew where they went. They all simply vanished one day. That is, until one cabinet reappeared briefly in an arcade in 1998, but just as soon as it had appeared, it soon disappeared. And while many have tried to recreate the original game, nobody has ever found the original ROM.

Spooky stuff man! With the history out of the way, we can move on to the gameplay and let me tell you guys, a good ripoff of the original game is not easy to find. For the record, I would like to state that I DID at LEAST make an effort to find the original ROM online. I was unsucessful, obviously, but I did settle for a good ripoff. I tried three different variations of the game, all were fundamentally the same, but the last one I found actually seemed... Better? I don't know, it seemed more official, like someone spent more than just a weekend on it. I'll do my best to explain it.

The game is a vector SMUP game with puzzle elements. Basically, you play as the most advanced vector space ship I've ever seen in 1981, your goal being to lower the shields in the center “mothership?” to zero to advance to the next level. You do this by shooting shapes that have numbers floating around them. See, the mothership has numbers rotating around it, if you hit a shape that has a number that either matches, or is devisible by the number floating around the mothership, then the mothership's shields will decrease by that number. For example, if the mothership has a sheild number of 6, and you shoot a shape shot out with a 3 on it, then the mothership's sheild will decrease by 3. If you hit a shape that is not devisible or matching the mothership number, then the sheilds will increase, same goes if you get hit by a number shape. You must also dodge enemies and avoid enemy fire. When the mothership's sheilds drop to zero, you move on to the next level.

The controls in this game are like nothing I've ever had to deal with. See, your ship stays on the right side of the screen. No matter what. You move the joystick up to move forward, despite the fact that you're on the right side of the screen facing left. Move the stock down to turn around and move backwards. Yep, you don't move backwards like in centipede or Phoenix,  you actually can face  backwards. You tilt the joystick left and right to not move you, but rotate the entire screen clockwise or counter clockwise pivoting on the center of the mothers ship. Yeah,  these controls are strange and feel completely foreign and unnatural, and it's not like this is 1976 where all games had some sort of weird controls, no, games by now all had grown to some sort of standard. That's not all that's weird about this game. The music is just electric whines and noise pulsating to a rythem. It almost seems  like the heartbeat of some strange electronic machine. Oh and you thought the colors for scramble were bad? Some of the later levels have strange psychedelic colors swirling in a weird spiral constantly shifting from one headache inducingly bright color to the next, the whole thing is very hypnotizing, but I wouldn't be surprised if people went into epileptic seizures at the sight of this game. Speaking of graphics, the graphics in this game are strange as well. As in,  not bad, the opposite really. What's strange about them is the amount of vector lines that this game produces. Most games from this era use very simple shapes with very few vector lines. Even more advanced games such as battlezone had fairly simple graphics. This game on the other hand, has vectors like I've never seen before. If this game truely came out in '81, how did they pull this off? Did arcade cabinets have that kind of Ram? This was back when the commodore 64 reined supreme, and 64 kilobytes of ram was something to brag about. Combined with colors that exceed 16bits, i just don't see this game being possible in the given time frame.

The question though is not "is this game possible" the question for this series is "is this game good?"

Well the controls are bizarre, the puzzles, confusing, the sound is headache inducing, the colors obnoxious, strange, unexplained messages flash in the background for only a fraction of a second, one time I could have sworn I briefly saw an image of a man's face in the background(no I'm not trying to be creepy, that really happens). And I cannot stop playing.

Have any of you played Angry Birds? Of course you have, everybody has, the game is addicting. Is Angry Birds a good game? No, it's mediocre at best, but the game is just so addicting that even the snobbiest of gamers have a hard time putting it down. Yeah, it's kind of like that, only worse. Imagine Angry Birds addiction level on steroids (or should I say lsd). I had to tear myself away from playing this game for an hour (most arcade games I only play for 15min max). It's just this version too. I got sick of the other two versions after just a few minutes, but this one, I don't know what it is, I just can't stop playing. So yeah, if you can find the right  version, and are not prone to motion sickness or epilepsy, i highly suggest this game as you'll be playing it for hours. In fact, I'm gonna fire it up for another round or two. Gotta kill that mother ship.

Next up: The Hobbit

#0034 Joust

Alright! Remember when I said Nintendo were the only ones who knew how to do pixel art? Well I lied apparently as Williams just surpassed Nintendo for “Best looking game of all time” I mean, seriously, look at that color scheme! I swear that color pallet looks better than 8 bit. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Today on 1K1VGYMPBYD we look at Joust a 1982 Platforming Game Developed by Williams Electronics. The same people who did Defender and Stargate.

This game is… Different. I mean, if I were to list all the space themed games, and then all the SMUP games, it would be 90% of the list, easy. There’s no denying that people are following trends and just making well-crafted clones of each other just to get by (Nintendo aside of course). This game, on the other hand, is neither a space theme, it’s a fantasy theme, nor a shooter, it’s a platformer, a very different platformer at that. Where most companies were trying to copy Nintendo’s Donkey Kong for their platforming experience, game designer John Newcomer decided to create a platformer that nobody had ever seen the likes of before. He wanted a flying game, that wasn’t a space theme. He decided on birds, because birds are cool. They eat bread crumbs. And crap on people. Funny Stuff. He also wanted a platforming experience that could be played co-op, and so he decided on jousting, where you play as flying ostriches, and impale enemies on a lance. The result was the hit arcade classic, Joust.

You play as a knight riding an ostrich, or stork, and your goal is to kill all the other knights on the screen, you basically run into eachother, and the person who is the highest, wins, if you’re both the same height, then you’ll just bounce off eachother. Once you knock a knight off his buzzard, he’ll turn into an egg and will hatch into a more powerful knight if you don’t collect it. You also have to watch out for the Lava Beast, that’ll hold you in position, and pterodactyls that are nearly invincible. When you kill all the other knights on the screen, you move on to the next one.

I gotta say guys, this is a fun game. It’s basically balloon fighter with a fantasy theme. I really liked it. It’s different from anything that’s come before it and honestly, that’s beyond refreshing after so many SHMUPS, you kind of start to get sick of them. The physics are good, the flying mechanic works surprisingly well, it’s really fun killing things, the graphics are superb and the artwork is very creative. Overall, it’s just a good game. Honestly?  I highly recommend it, and I think we have an early runner for game of the year 1982.

Next Up: Polybius (Yeah, I know the game’s from 1981, I somehow skipped over it between Galaga and Donkey Kong, I guess I was just too excited to finally do a Nintendo Review. Either way, I need to do all 1001 games, so I gotta go back and take this one out real quick.)

#0033 Gravitar

 Alright, finally! So, for those who don't remember, I am currently working my way through the book “1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die”. Not just reading it, but actually treating it like a video game bucket list. As a recovering Nintendo Fanboy, I missed out on some amazing games from the past three decades. I intend on making up for that by playing every amazing game from every generation and then documenting my experiences. So, for this article, I'm reviewing Atari's smash hit “Gravitar”.

Remember when I said I didn't much care for Asteroids? And then I thought Lunar Lander was frustratingly unfair? Well what happens when you put those two games together? That's right! You get Gravitar, a 1982 SHMUP (I just learned that word, way easier to type than “Shoot 'em Up”).

In this game you play as the ship from Asteroids, your goal is to travel the solar system and kill all the turrets on all the planets, while avoiding attacks from the flying saucers and other enemy ships. There are two basic screens, there's the overworld screen, There are five different planets of various difficulty, a starting point, (which I think is supposed to be the sun, but I can't tell, vector graphics may be clean, but they're not exactly detail oriented.) and some sort of pointy planet that kills you if you get too close. Guess which planet you gravitate to at the start of the game? Yeah the spiky one, of course, so that means that you'll die right at the beginning if you’re not careful, and when I first started the game I wasn't sure which button was thrust so I lost a life just trying to figure out which button I should press not to die. So you fly around the overworld screen, avoiding the spiky planet, and other enemy ships if you get too close to an enemy ship, the screen changes into some sort of battlescreen where you must kill the enemy ship in order to continue, when you fly close to a planet, then the map changes to a closeup of that planet (which usually looks nothing like the overworld planet). At this point, the game looks less like Asteroids and more like Lunar Lander with bullets. You're job it to avoid crashing on the surface of the planet, avoid the bullet barrage from the enemy turrets, and avoid the fire of enemy ships (they can actually follow you into the closeup map, very clever, cool feature), and kill every enemy turret until the planet is cleared. Then you move on to the next planet.

This game is hard, most of the difficulty comes from the game's physics, which are quite realistic, a lot like Asteroids, I often found that most of my deaths didn't come at the expense of enemy ships, but from crashing into some sort of planetary terrain, especially on the 9000 point planet you can see on the left.

But the most important question is, is the game good? Eh, not really. It's not bad like Gorf was, and admittedly it was funner than either Asteroids or Lunar Lander by themselves. It just didn't leave a huge impression on me. The physics are great, very realistic, the overworld and planetary maps are a good and smart feature, and is something that would still be used in a game like this today. And the enemies following you in real time into the planets is cool as well, but overall, I wouldn’t come back to it too much. But it's okay for what it's trying to do.

With that said welcome to 1982! The last year of the Golden Age of Arcade Games. Some promising games are ahead for this year, even a bonus game that's not on the list will be included this year due to popular demand. The ColecoVision releases this year as well as the Intelevision to Europe and Japan after it's release in 1979 in the US. Unfortunately, this is also the year we start to see an influx of crap games from third party companies to the 2600, and the noticeable decline in quality from Atari's arcade games (which is evident even in this game). But the crash isn't for another year, so until then, let's grab some quarters and celebrate like it's 1982!

Up next: Joust

#0032 Ultima I

Sorry guys! School's back so that means that 1k1VGYMPBYD will be fewer and further between. But that's okay, because this is 1001 games to play before you DIE, not by the end of the year, so I think I'm doing pretty good as far as bucket lists go.

So today was really interesting, I played Ultima: The First Age of Darkness. Developed in 1981 by Richard Garriott, the man responsible for the Ultima Series even to this day. In fact, this is the first RPG on the list to evolve into an entire franchise. It's also the first RPG to use a “tile base” graphical system for the overworld. The First RPG to have an overworld, or NPCs that you can talk to. And just by looking at it, you can see how this game can be seen as a major turning point for RPGs everywhere. Heck, this is the first RPG on the list to have actual graphics, how's that for a concept?

In Ultima: The First Age of Darkness, the story revolves around an evil wizard named Mondain, and his rule over the kingdom of Sosaria. According to the backstory, Mondain created an evil gem over 1000 years ago that grants him immortality. Since then, Mondain has released hideous monsters and ferocious beast upon the land because... He's just a dick like that I guess? I think he's just doing it for the lulz, just a troll looking for attention.

Anywho, in an effort to stop Mondain's domination, Lord British (yeah that's his real name) searched someone stupid enough, and a drifter lonely enough that not only would this person be stupid enough to try and fight a thousand year old invincible wizard. Alone. But nobody will miss him when he dies. Obviously the quest falls on you, the player.

The player is informed that the only way to kill Mondain is to travel back in time and kill him before the gem of immortality is created. The majority of the game is spent searching for a time machine (I still have no idea where it is) and a way to activate it. Four of the lords in the game, one for each realm, hold a gem that will allow the time machine to work once all four gems have been found. In exchange for the gem, the lord will ask the player to complete a quest that involves traveling to a dungeon and killing a specific creature. Once you kill this creature, the lord will hand over his gem.

Once you somehow obtain a time machine, you travel back in time and face Mondain before he completed the gem of immortality. Destroying the gem is a requirement for beating the game as well as killing the wizard himself. Once Mondain is dead, the player creates a temporal paradox by killing Mondain 1000 years in the past, thus preventing the events which cause the player to be called to the world in the first place. Time and space become unstable and soon the very fabric of reality is split horribly in two and the wold as we know it is completely destroyed, but at least there's no more ferocious beasts. Nah, I'm just kidding, you're transported back to your current time and rewarded by Lord British, I think at least, admittedly I never got even close to beating this game.

The game's mechanics differ drastically from that of every other RPG I've watched my wife play. But at least it starts out very similar. You're given a number of points to distribute between various stats. Then, you're given the choice of four races, Human, Elf, Dwarf and Bobbit (tf is that?) Then asked to choose a one of four classes, fighter, cleric, wizard and thief, then finally you choose your gender. I chose to be a Human thief, which I later realized was a bad idea since the game is ridiculously unbalanced in the beginning, and I kept dying over and over again. So yeah, at least that much is like RPGs, but after that, things get weird. For example, leveling up does not raise your base stats, in fact, leveling up doesn't do much of anything. You NEED to level up, don't get me wrong, unless you're level eight (that's pretty high), you can't obtain a crucial item to beat the game. So if you don't raise your stats by leveling up, how do you raise your stats? By talking to sign posts. No joke, there are a few sign posts scattered around Sosaria that when you interact with them, raise one set stat except for HP, your HP increases when you emerge from a dungeon and has no upper cap, meaning that you can essentially go into a dungeon, kill one monster, come back out and get more HP, rinse and repeat until you're invincible. I spent nearly three hours doing just this, and it nearly drove me insane. So yeah, stats are weird, but since you can also buy/steal weapons that raise your stats too, then it's okay. Also, Magic comes in the form of a scroll that's consumed when you use it. Meaning that even a dwarf fighter can use magic, you just have to pay more for it.

Normally right here I'd describe the settings, and how each of the setting pieces work, as well as the characters, but as I was typing these explanations of what the dungeons do, how the towns are different, and the contents of the world map, it was starting to get like two pages long and I wasn't even half way done. All you need to know is that the world map contains, castles, towns, dungeons, mountains, forests and other little places of interest, most of which don't behave like they would in a normal RPG. There, I saved you two more pages of boring specifics.

Overall, this game rocks! It's dated, VERY dated even compared games such as the original Dragon Quest. But I'm not going to lie, after you get used to the mechanics, and you get through the beginning, which to me is the hardest part, the game is pretty fun. I had a lot of fun just running through the first person view dungeons killing things that kind of look like monsters if you squint your eyes enough. The difficulty curb is so high that when you finally get to a point where you don't have to worry about dying so much, it's actually a pretty neat sense of accomplishment. Not only that, but this is the game that finally brought all the separate components of the RPGs and text adventures I've played on the list and finally combined them into one game. This has the story and adventure of Zork, the RPG mechanics of Eamon, the random dungeon design of Rogue. Overall, this game is a huge step for the entire RPG genre, and if you're a fan of western RPGs such as Dragon Age, or Skyrim. I suggest giving this game a shot, you might be surprised with how much fun you can have with such a primitive game.

And that! My friends, marks the end of 1981! Lots of great games this year, as well as Gorf. So! As per tradition, here's my 1981 Game of the Year!

First up, the games:

1. Galaga
2. Donkey Kong
3. Qix
4. Scramble
5. Stargate
6. Venture
7. Ms. Pac-Man
8. Frogger
9. Gorf
10. Ultima I

That's two down from last year,

40% are shoot 'em ups, down from last year, thank goodness, and surprisingly, none were made by Atari, seems like this just wasn't their year huh? Also, 90% of these games were arcade, so not a great year for PCs either. And the award for game of the year 1981 goes toooooo:

Donkey Kong!

Yeah, you all knew it was coming. I couldn't help it, as much as I'm trying to get away from my fanboyism, there's just no denying how amazing this game is. It literally did everything the Video Game industry wasn't doing at the time. Where most were space invader clones, (or straight ripoffs, looking at you Gorf!), this game was a Platformer, indeed the first platformer, it invented a new genre. Where most companies had maybe two sprites to represent movement, Donkey Kong was fully animated. Where most companies had little to no music, doneky Kong had original background music. It was a hit that put the little Nintendo on the map, proved Shigeru Mmiyamoto as one of the greatest game designers, and saved the little company when it faced apocalypse in 1983. I cannot express just how Amazing this game was. It was inspiring, beyond it's time and my pick for game of the year 1981.

Next up: Gravitar

Also, like I said earlier, school just started this year so priorities must be shifted a bit, here's a rundown of how low 1K1VGYMPBYD must be on my priorities for now:

1. My wife and all her needs.
2. My job.
3. School
4. My Big surprise project for my wife.
5. This list

So yeah, reviews won't be as frequent, but don't dispair, I'm not giving up on it. How could I? I'm just starting to have fun!

#0031 Gorf

… I don't want to review this game. I really don't. There are so many other games out there that deserve to be in this book besides this one. Alright, here it goes. Today, on 1K1VGYMPBYD, we look at Gorf (Galactic Orbiting Robot Force), a 1981 Shoot 'em Up developed by the famous Dave Nutting Associates. Six bucks says you can't name a single game they made besides this without looking it up. It is pretty much known only for it's use of it's terrible synthesized speech. As to why this atrocity made the 1001 list and not Sinistar, I'll never know.

Okay, in this game you play as the ship from Galaxian. Your job is to defend the earth from alien invaders, just like we've been doing for the last four years now. You must fight your way through five distinct levels, Astro Battles, Laser Attack, Galaxians, Space Warp and Flag ship, the boss. which is cool I guess since no other games had done this other than Phoenix, and Donkey Kong. The other thing that must be mentioned is the voice. Unfortunately all the emulators I could find all had a problem with this synthesized voice, as it was absent from all versions I tried. But I did manage to find video containing the voice, to put it simply, I wasn't missing much, the voice just shouts little catch phrases when you beat a level, kill a bad guy and when you die. Hardly anything to write home about. Besides that, the only other inclusion is how the laser fires. You can technically fire as many times as you want, but every time you press the fire button, the previous laser you fired disappears from the screen, meaning that if you want your laser to go all the way to the top of the screen, you must sit and wait for that laser to get to the top of the screen, which is a terrible idea since one of the most important parts of shoot em ups is the ability to look where you're going to fire, line it up, fire and look for the next shot, as soon as you fire that shot, you shouldn’t even have to watch the shot, just worry about where your next one goes. But in Gorf, you have to watch your shot to make sure it made it to it's target before you fire another shot. Terrible idea choice. Other than that, it's your standard Space Invaders clone like we've seen a million times.

So how is the game? By my tone you should already know the answer. This game, is horrible. Easily the worst I've played so far on this list, and probably the first I'd argue doesn't belong here. I've talked about Space Invaders clones in the past, games like Phoenix and Galaga that are “like Space Invaders but...”, never on this list have I played an actual space invaders ripoff. Like, right down to the sprites and sounds. It just boggles my mind how they could pull this off and not get sued. Oh but they don't stop at Space Invaders, oh no. Why not go the whole nine yards and include a watered down port of Galaxian.

Yeah, in this level you fight Galaxains, it is also a clone, but a worse type than the Space Invaders thing. See, the problem is, when you deliberately and shamelessly rip off a hit arcade game such as Galaxian, you invite people to compare them. This might be a little better if they proved that since 1979 the graphics scene on the Arcade front have improved, but they don't, in fact, the graphics actually look worse! Several of the animations for the Galaxians such as being killed are severely watered down from their original sprites and they look terrible.

This was honestly the first game on the list that I did not want to play even 15 minutes. The controls were so bad, and the firing mechanic so broken, that it was near unplayable.

That's not really what I'm mad about though, sure the game controls suck and they're blatant plagiarists, but at least they admitted that they're just being talentless hacks by not hiding the fact that they just ripped off two of the biggest classics in shoot em ups by using the exact sprites. I'll at least give them that, they made shit, but at least they're standing by their shit. No the problem is, this game represents everything that was wrong with the gaming industry back in the early 80's. Games like this, ripping off other more talented game designers just to cash in on this video game craze. The saturation of the market with clones and overall crappy products made the whole industry bloated until the point came where the whole video game bubble popped. Taking video game giants such as Mattel and especially Atari with it. This game could have been good, it could have been something different, or at the very least added something to the genre. But no, they were content riding the coattails of Taito and Namco. Do not even bother with this game, the graphics are mediocre at best, the colors are obnoxious and even distracting in the first level, controls are borderline broken, and offers absolutely nothing that we haven't seen in other games done way better. Maybe I'll do Sinistar just to make up for this mistake of a game.

Next Up: Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, I'm actually looking forward to this.